


Beyond The Pale

by levitatethis



Category: Oz (TV)
Genre: Angst, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-10-09
Updated: 2010-10-09
Packaged: 2017-10-12 18:28:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,452
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/127782
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/levitatethis/pseuds/levitatethis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Half of Toby's pain is his own doing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Beyond The Pale

_“It’s gonna take a long time to love  
It’s gonna take a lot to hold on   
It’s gonna be a long way to happy, yeah   
Left in the pieces that you broke me into   
Torn apart but now I’ve got to   
Keep on rolling like a stone   
‘Cause it’s gonna be a long long way to happy.”_   
**-Pink,** _ **Long Way To Happy**_

  
 _“Chris, I want to ask you something. I probably haven’t asked you because I didn’t want to know the answer. I know you were married all those times and I’m wondering if I was the first, you know, the first man?”_

Chris laughs.

“Well, I guess that answers my question.”

“No, no it doesn’t. I just think it’s an odd conversation for us to be having right before you go to your son’s funeral.”

“The FBI says you’re responsible for a series of homosexual murders.”

“The FBI—,”

“I’m not asking you to tell me if you committed the murders. I’m asking if you’ve ever felt this way with another man.”

“No. I have not felt this way. I swear, Toby.”

“You’re lying.”

“Toby, man.”

“You’re lying.”

  
 ************ ********** ********** ********** ************

  
Toby swallowed self-loathing whole like a whisky shot, letting it burn his throat with the bitter sting of the past. He accepted punishment because he believed he deserved it. Happiness always came at a price, a high one, costly, irrevocable. There was always a catch waiting in the wings, ready to drop across his neck like a guillotine.

He hadn’t _earned_ the right to smile—let alone mean it.

It was more than his own life which had been destroyed by selfishly guided actions. His family was crushed under the wrath of universal retribution. Such was the consequence of not towing the line of excellence: the brilliant lawyer, a dutiful son, a faithful husband, the loving father—be the best of all those things, but woe was complacency. He never could just go through the motions and accept what was. No, he needed to feel something. So he chose the short term, immediate gratification of pleasure which came in a bottomless bottle, and licked the sticky remnants that clung to the curved glass lip.

It may have granted him a false reprieve from an otherwise static existence, but his imagination filled in the rough and jagged blanks. It was enough until it was too much and then all too late he realized what he had traded all of it in for.

Literally and metaphorically he was stripped naked. Decimated and deconstructed, he felt too much, until it nearly choked the putrid life out of him and he tickled his outstretched fingers against the fraying fabric which held the faded memories of the life which was once his.

He chose to be numb, to fly high and crash hard, and hurdle head first in to Hell. But the fire didn’t want him (yet) or couldn’t handle him (at all) and the shadow of the crossroads loomed across his path. He knew happiness wasn’t meant to be a wife, 2.2 kids and a house with a white picket fence, so he tried for peace of mind instead; no room for apathy in the process. The fight for self-determination was bitter as he stared down giants and drank in the rush of shadows claiming squatters rights in the corners of his eyes.

Still, the universe wasn’t content to live and let live. It lay in wait to trip him up and chuckle at the pathetic misfortunes he let himself (beyond good reason) believe were real. Hope was a dangerous drug. It encouraged and implied while pushing the boundaries which had commanded caution in a bid for survival.

The offer lay across the table and Toby—heart pounding, mind cluttered, eyes wide open—accepted it. He traded in one life for another.

And for the first time his world exploded open, all brilliant sparks and fiery sensations. It was all or nothing, now or never. Vanilla comfort gave way to burning his tongue on the unknown, unexpected and unrealized. The cost was his head.

Genevieve for Chris.

But what happiness—solace—could he really expect to find with Keller? Chris Keller. Con man, small time hood, blue-collar thief and alleged killer. He was a textbook bad boy (so much so he made the back of Toby’s neck flush red out of embarrassed _want_ and unabashed _lust_ ) and the warning signs blinked a red SOS. He was there at the bottom, when it was impossible for Toby to sink any lower. He was the constant, insisting he loved even the ugly in Toby, the broken and destitute.

School recitals. PTA meetings. Themed children’s parties. They were set aside for shadow cloaked midnight trysts in the bottom bunk, eye-fucking across the quad and renegotiations of personal space which challenged every preconceived thought Toby ever had about what could tease and satisfy him.

There was no mirror transference. What was once freedom in the technical sense—the storybook tale of young, sweet love, of a family’s legacy—lost ground to the most base of urgent desires, the kind that forced Toby’s brain into first gear and twisted him inside out, the kind that raced a body rush like a brush fire across him, from toes to fingertips, making him understand the adage, ‘Today is the first day of the rest of your life.’

He wanted it to be true, for a split second and the caustic blink of an eye. He thought he caught the glimmer of light at the end of a pitch black tunnel. It wasn’t perfect—not beneath the scrutinizing judgment of asshole power-trippers content to turn the other cheek to degradation while wagging a cautioning finger at genuine moments of consent. It wasn’t perfect—not when mistakes garnered life or death consequences or drew battle lines, not when the tie to another was so intense it suffocated. It wasn’t perfect—not as long as Toby couldn’t forget the Devilish glint in the eyes of the man he loved (thought he did at the time, didn’t, but came to later on) just before he snapped Toby’s arms in two and let that Nazi fuck crush his legs, before smirking down at their self-serving handiwork—his distorted body played out the floor.

Toby still smelled the stench of his sweat mingled with Chris’ in the gym, different from the shared arousal back when Chris taught him how to wrestle on that very spot. The second time around cursed tears down Toby’s cheek with the whispered taunt, _‘No one will ever love you, so do what you do best—disappear.’_ Which he didn’t. Even through the ravaged lands of vengeance, he couldn’t completely give in to denial. There _had_ been something, even if it was one-sided. That’s why it hurt so fucking much.

No. None of it was perfect. It was better.

It was the incredible thrill of uncharted—discontent at times—territory. Each step forward was fraught with challenges, making the pain debilitating and the revelation bliss. The world was a minefield and the reward was unparalleled rapture.

Toby willed himself to believe the extent of his feelings wasn’t just a fool’s errand. He needed every confessional conversation to matter. That would be God’s forgiveness, wouldn’t it? Pushing aside past sins and marking them as collected debts. The trouble would be that he found love in the least likely of places; the gift would be that he’d finally found love.

That was where the stories normally ended, with a succinct, _‘happily ever after,’_ and the (naïve) belief only good could come of it all. But the truth of the matter—beneath remembrances of fingers trailing along heated skin (gripping joints and bending them the wrong way, forcing them past the point of no return), beyond the coaxing tip of a tongue across parted lips (spilling hateful sentiments), behind a matching smile (condescending smirk) and penetrating blue eyes (glaring jovially at a hurt soul), far away from promises meant to encompass the expanse of mortal time (a heap of body parts left on the doorstep of the reaper)—was that salvation came laced with sin and love was for other folks.

A con man tells just enough of the truth to slip the noose over your neck.

 _Rock-a-bye baby  
On the tree top  
When the wind blows  
The cradle will rock  
When the bough breaks  
The cradle will fall  
And down will come baby  
Cradle and all  
_  
God. Fate. The Gods. Karma. All declared, _‘There will be a price,’_ and for Chris’ _life_ , Toby accepted it, never thinking the price would be his heart snatched away like a thief in the night.

His son, his first born, dead and gone. His daughter, light of his life, lost in oblivion. Nothing was real but Hell on earth, the cumulative suffering of misdeeds and a weak heart.

Toby didn’t deserve love. Not while his son rotted to death and his daughter cried out for help. How dare he claim to know anything about it. He was exactly where he belonged. Locked up with the most deceptive members of society in a snakes and ladders nightmare. Every door he opened was destined to put another crack in his jigsaw soul.

Toby looked in the mirror and saw an absentee father and a black sheep for a son. He lowered his shoulders under the weight of every screw up he had caused and abject disappointment he’d been. He saw a frail version of himself, sorrow mixed with anger in his eyes, and the pathetic hint of hope trailing behind.

That Chris could look him in the eyes and state he’d never felt for anyone else what he felt for Toby stuttered Toby’s thought process and drew his eyes into inquisitive slants. Of course it was a lie. Chris was incapable of love and Toby was destined to never have it. It didn’t matter how emphatically Chris tried to make the declaration sound, somewhere in the space between his lips and Toby’s ears, the words hollowed out, fell flat, just in time for Toby to easily convince himself of worst case scenarios. He told himself what Chris was really saying was, _‘Hey man, don’t make this more than what it is. Don’t make it any less. A good fuck is hard to find. What’s love got to do with it?’_

All the same, he couldn’t look Chris in the eyes for too long without the nagging whisper prickling the skin up the back of his neck. After all, someone without honour was hard up for positive reinforcements. It proved easier to shove Chris back on his heels with a harsh and dismissive rebuke. Then Toby didn’t have to live up or down to expectations. He could annihilate them.

He had a long way to go until he could offload the condemnation placed squarely on his shoulders. The consideration itself was light years away. Toby made the only sense he could of Chris’ words and deliberateness of the stance, insisting they befit the moment and were nothing more than placating dribble. It served Toby right after the near unconscious way he went through part of his own life, keeping those he proposed to love at bay with platitudes and a shit-for-grin demeanor.

The alternative made his mouth go dry, throat turn sore when he swallowed, and palms sweaty. The flipside of the coin made his mind spin a yarn so unbelievable it was either a Grimm fairytale or stranger than fiction. A stone-cold, sex on legs, beholden to no one, street smart, well read, larger than life presence holding _Toby_ apart from all others? Chris broke him once, literally, and ever since, figuratively, realigning set points and rewriting—rebuilding—the players and rules.

How could _anyone_ care for him, least of all…

What did it say about Toby that deep down inside he clung to it like a lifeline while simultaneously pushing Chris away?

Toby refused to hear Chris. He would not taint the still innocent memories of his children with the sordidness of what their father had become. He accepted his own feelings for Chris. Some days he wrote them off as an extension of his addictive personality, other days he saw it for what it was, no holds barred. Chris he likened to a cipher, one always just out of reach yet infusing every square inch. And as his presence in Toby’s life nudged Toby forward, off pace, tripping, standing ground, Toby used it to steel himself against every curve ball hurled his way.

Except one.

Toby wouldn’t absolve himself and he wouldn’t grant absolution to Chris. Better to stick one’s head in the sand and trudge forward, blinders in place, no matter how perfect it would be to consider otherwise. In a matter of days, Toby came to regard himself as unworthy of anything but disgust, shame and alienation.

Toby chose cold over warmth.

Emptiness over comfort.

Maybe one day he would let those words sink through the rough skin he’d developed. But that day existed in a distant future that seemed forever out of reach. A day might come where he could envelop himself in the safety of the unflinching statement and not hear a professional lie where it didn’t exist. There may be a time when he could let himself seek comfort in Chris’ strong arms and soothing voice promising a better tomorrow. But not while Toby hated himself.

He saw Kathy’s contorted face smashed against his windshield, heard her parents anguish shouted his way. The universe balanced itself and cut him in pieces once more.

Toby ignored the surprised disappointment which settled on Chris’ face, surely in response to caring words being easily disregarded. He wanted Chris to suffer the sting of refusal, to either feel the same uncertainty and despair which threatened to snap Toby’s neck or to know his games wouldn’t work on Toby any longer, so put all the cards on the table, call a bygone a bygone and cut the bullshit. As long as everyone Toby cared for—the innocent casualties of a war he hadn’t realized was declared—suffered, he figured the rest could fuck themselves.

One day he might feel it fair—to be loved so absolutely that even at his worst he would be protected and revered. To love so strongly he would be able to see through the smoke screens. But not now.

Now, Toby played pretend on the sacrificial altar. He chose not to believe when Chris—one of the only people to ever unapologetically put everything on the line—told him the truth.

 _No._

The absolute truth.

 _I have not felt this way._

And nothing but.

 _I swear, Toby._  
 


End file.
